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As you know, I have begun thinking about a future that includes the possibility of dating. Obviously that brings up a world of shit for me, because dating means intimacy, and men scare the crap out of me.

I figured I should try to work out some of my barriers to dating, so I brought it up with my therapist. One of the things we talked about was the fact that I have an issue with people’s names. (Mostly men’s names, of course.) I believe that people with certain names are bad, and people with other names are good. If I meet someone new and they have a ‘bad’ name, I assume they are bad people. For instance, I wouldn’t date anyone with my brother’s name because obviously they’re bad people.

My therapist said that if I told her a name, she could tell me an example of someone good with that name and an example of someone bad with that name. I said, “So what does that mean then? I’m wrong about the name thing?”

She said “It’s an illusion of safety. You think that if you can categorize people into good and bad based on just their names, then you are safe from bad people. It’s an attempt at creating safety.”

I had never looked at it that way, but she is absolutely right. The ‘names thing’, the ‘only wearing certain colors of underwear thing’, the ‘only reaching for stuff with my right hand’, etc., all of these nutty things are my attempts at creating safety.

This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We construct attempts at safety and take comfort in the illusion. We judge people on names and form reasons to hold people at arms’ length.

Like this:

It’s been almost 10 months now since my husband told me he feels like a girl inside. The first five months were spent in heavy mourning, with a lot of crying. The next two months – I spent them in and out of the hospital due to gall bladder issues combined with iatrogenic harm. Then these last few months I spent coming to an acceptance.

My mind has begun to understand my husband as a female, and I accept our upcoming divorce. Our relationship has morphed, after a lot of crying, fighting, blaming, etc., into a lovely friendship.

Now that I’ve come to this place of acceptance, I have begun thinking about the idea of dating in the future. When I picture trying to date a new man, I worry over every part of it. I have no specific man I am thinking of dating, mind you, so all these worries occur with some faceless guy in the future. Inevitably, my mind goes to the probability of me having sex issues in bed with new guy. I mean, that was the reason I ended up marrying my husband. He never pushed me on sex, and I sought out the safety of that. So it’s inevitable that this issue will surface again with a new dude. And even that is only if I can get over myself enough to freaking try to date again.

Sometimes I picture it all going something like this:
New Dude: “By the way, Butterfly, how many dudes have you slept with?”
Butterfly: “Oh, uh, one.”
New Dude: “What?”
Butterfly: “Yeah. The first guy was my husband. I was almost 31 when we slept together. A few months before we got married.”
New Dude: “Seriously? Why??”

And this is where I stare at him and contemplate saying “This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We grow up scared of penis and sex and we marry men who don’t want sex, or in my case, their penis.”

Tyler Perry published an open letter to the Penn State victim, and I am copying it in its entirety below. I got it from the Newsweek website here. There were many parts of the letter that resonated with me, that made me cry, and that made me grateful for the courage of the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s abuse. They show great courage by coming forward with the truth of what happened to them. To those boys and men, I say this: From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You show great courage every morning when you wake up to face the day, and you show even greater courage by breaking yourselves of this horrible albatross of a secret. Your courage inspires all other survivors to break free from our secrets as well.

Tyler Perry’s letter (below):

Tyler Perry’s Open Letter to Penn State 11-Year-Old

Nov 28, 2011 12:00 AM EST

I don’t know your name, but I know your face. I don’t know your journey, but I know where you are. I am your brother!

I must tell you, what you have done is so courageous. The strength that it must have taken for your 11-year-old voice to speak out about such a horrible act is something that I didn’t have the strength or courage to do at that age.

I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive. Forget about living, I was just trying to exist. I was enduring a lot of the same things that you’ve come forward and said happened to you, and it was awful. I felt so powerless. I knew what was happening to me, but unlike you, I couldn’t speak about it because no one saw me. I was invisible and my voice was inaudible.

So to think that you, when you were only 11 years old, spoke up—you are my hero! I’m so proud of you. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I want you to know you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. Please know that you were chosen by a monster. You didn’t choose him. You didn’t ask for it and, most of all, you didn’t deserve it. What a huge lesson that was for me to learn. Your 11-year-old self was no match for wicked, evil tactics of this kind. You were hunted like prey. A pedophile looks for the young boys he thinks he can manipulate. The ones who have daddy or mommy issues, the ones who are broken, and the ones who are in need. But this wasn’t you.

Tyler Perry., Christian Lantry / Corbis Outline

Do you know that at the young age of 11 you had more courage than all the adults who let you down? All of the ones who didn’t go to the proper authorities, all of the ones who were worried about their careers, reputations, or livelihoods. All of the ones who didn’t want to get involved. Or even the ones who tried to convince your mother not to fight. You are stronger than them all! I wonder what they would have done if it were their own child.

I had a few of those adults in my life, too. They knew and did nothing. One of them even said to me that it was my fault, because I allowed myself to spend time with the molesters. And yes, this was someone who was in power and could have called the police, but instead this person allowed this criminal to go on molesting other young boys for many years. When I did tell a family member, I wasn’t believed. I suffered in silence. But not you, my young strong hero, you have done what many of us wish we could have done. You used your voice!

You know, now that you’re older you need to be aware that the aftermath of abuse may affect you for a very long time. But that’s OK; just know that the strength it took for you to talk about it then will help you get through it now. I often tell myself that if I made it through that experience as a child, then surely as a man I should be able to get past it. It still may take you a while, but that’s OK too. I have known people who have gone through the same things that we have, but unfortunately they were never able to admit it, and it destroyed them. They never went for help, and they let the abuse defeat them. Some of them went to prison for crimes, some are addicted to drugs, and some have even committed suicide. I know that none of these things will happen to you. You are too strong for that!

No matter what happens next, just know that the hardest part is over. I wish the coward and very sick individual who hurt you would have the courage to admit his wrong and not put you through a trial. But he will most likely profess his innocence until the bitter end. And probably, all the while, yelling at the top of his lungs about all he has done to help troubled young boys.

You may have to go through with that trial, and you may feel all alone when you’re on that witness stand, but just know that there are millions of young boys and grown men who are standing with you—including me. If every man who has ever been molested would speak up, you would see that we’re all around you. You may not know all of our faces and names, but my prayer is that you feel our strength holding you up. You will get through this; you’ve already endured the worst part at age 11. Now fight on, my young friend, fight on! We are all with you.

Do you remember that movie Thelma and Louise? In the movie, this guy is trying to rape Thelma, and Louise kills him before he can finish. Before she kills him though, the rapist defends himself by saying “We were just having some fun.” Louise, a rape survivor herself, said, “Just so you know, when women are crying and screaming like that, they aren’t having any fun.”

I woke up today thinking about that movie. When that babysitter was molesting us, I wonder if we cried and screamed. Probably not, judging by my behavior with my brother while he was molesting me. I probably dissociated and left my body and pretended I was somewhere else, like I did with my brother.

This happens to me so often. I HATE not having conscious memory of her, of what she did to us. I wouldn’t hate it but for the fact that all my symptoms of surviving molestation appeared after she molested us, which was years BEFORE my brother ever touched me. So, obviously the memories are stuck somewhere in my subconscious, unable to be accessed by the rest of me. And so I am left to drive myself crazy with the wonderings of what she actually did, how she went about hurting us, how long she waited after my mom left, how we reacted, etc.